Infographics, dataviz and interactives

US elections are coming and here in Hong Kong we want to see it from an Asian perspective. Some weeks ago I start this project to collect the data of Asians in US and visualize it.

The map in first instance is nothing more than a choropleth map, I start from a black map as the one in the top, then one by one I manually add a grey value in five clusters, white for 0% and so on to +25% as the dark grey.

The US Census Bureau has a very specific data for Asians in US, but I use data also from the APIA and AAJC Asian organizations in US as well, the research phase takes me about a week, producing the graphics and coding it was about four days, and about an other week making edits and corroborating each small graphic and each word in the special feature. I must highlight that this graphic was not just a map, each state in the US has a detail of text and graphics so it was not ease to check, edit and revise.

Early version of the country over view. As you may note, beyond color the elevation is different, my first data set was for total population instead of percent of the population

The map was generated with Cinema 4D, based on a grey scale county map, then styled with Illustrator and photoshop and coded with Brackets io trough SVG, Jquery, JS…

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The color code is very important because the position of camera will change in perspective, so the color make easier to visually determinate the height of each area no matter the position. In the following image the camera position affect the way we perceive the height of the counties, just because the matter of point of view, but when color is on… well, see your self:

Brown means Asian population over 25% in the specific county (as well the height), I call that to perceive data in multidimensional ways, but keep it understandable

The position of cameras will change for each state, as for the videos and other sections using the specific portions of the map to tell different stories.

Following the 3D idea, the complementary graphics was also generated in C4D and the layout phase begin.

Some graphics display scroll-trigged video on desktop versions, then for mobile switch for static renders because IOS don’t allow autoplay videos or video out side the native player

This is one of the city spinners, all of them uses an image like this, is positioned by the mouse drag final position and makes the 3d effect

Here is some of the work progress behind the China Cities project, released last week at scmp.com the first thing was the idea on a quick draft:

Concept layout for the special feature at scmp.com

This infographic about the China’s Cities classification was made must as a simply data graphic, it loads .json data for each city in to an html-svg graphic. All the 613 cities loads very fast, maybe the most heavy piece of this special feature is the China county map.

This is the look of each city behind the graphic

The map of China was no ease to make, on that level of detail seems is not available public any where so from a Chinese cartographer library I get a non labeled county map, well not in english at less, so for the next 3 days I spend my time looking for each county division corroborating and adding names to specific regions of this new vector map of China.

The map has 4 different configurations for each county, sounds like a few but actually that means 4x 613 different counties to check because China counties English map doesn’t exist here so two days more of checking added.
Then was time for fist section, the simplest graphics but the first ones that people will see, this graphics will show what’s a tier and how China’s cities are sorted in to:

A few days ago this project about the ageing population goes live at scmp.com

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Here is a lot of information to explore, the interactive special feature have plus 40 years of population forecast for Hong Kong, there, you can explore how the population will be conformed for the next years a how will be getting older and older.

Usually I don’t use or make much illustration by my self, but I been losing fear about, I have the intention to use illustration to make a balance of the serious and hard data-viz.

Some days ago, the SCMP special package about the G20 meeting in Hangzhou, China was released. I must admit, I would have liked to have more time to intervene in the design, but I have a graphics queue waiting in other projects, so, I focused particularly on the graphics for this time.

Illustrator layout for the first graphic.

There are 3 graphics, all them with small simply animations. Usually, I start analyzing the data on excel, or numbers in Mackintosh. Then I go to the paper, the scheme, aspect, interaction, variables and even animation is defined in the phase, thats the reason why this is the crucial part, and the harder one.

Next, is the vector time. I start the translation from paper to Illustrator, in this case, take the paper ideas to illustrator is just one day of work, but all the assets will be ready to the develop phase, is just a thing of order in the groups, layers and documents. That, because I take the illustrator files to generate the svg base for coding through javascript.

Initial scheme for the second graphic. This is a guide to take the idea. Some point forward the graphic change to an partial version with more interactive options by editors observations.

Here is the second proposal of the graphic 2, including the editors request.

The next step was the development phase.
I work with Brackets, an open source software to edit text code, it have a nice extensions to make the life simpler 🙂
If the asset don’t need to interact with js, I just call it as images, but if this asset needs to be transformed on color, position, size, opacity, content, shape… then a take the code from the svg file, which is very similar to an xml file. In this way I will be allowed to select parts of the svg and change it by coding instructions for the user interaction.

The first graphic has 191 posible configurations. At the bottom of this image, also is all the population density por all the G20 country members.

The process includes files such as .css .html .js .svg and some times depending on the functions or effects images, audio or video. Both versions (desktop and mobile) are working simultaneously, but some times different browser testing (cross browsing) and some queries remains to the end o the digital process.

Finally, when the digital product is ready, I have to make some smaller versions for the print, in this time, I take the graphics #1 and #3 to integrate in a very compact version, in total five graphics for different days of publications.

3 col graphics for 5 days of different publications

If you want to see the final product, you may find the interactive graphics here

The Pokemon fever runs out the whole world, here in Hong Kong the people also was infected with the Pokemon global madness, so we in the SCMP graphics want’s to offer something different to our readers, and that was a detailed map of the Hong Kong Pokemon spots and a plus graphic about the Skills and weaknesses of each class of Pokemon.

The map was a hard work, to get all this data the folder of Pokemon project reach about 12 Gigabytes of my computer, but off course the final application on line is just about 500KB, I catch this information from an other game in which the creators was based to create the Pokemon virtual world, the whole process takes me 5 days including the new design and the development phase.

When I finish the data catch phase and clean it, the points shows a really nice pattern, following the urban areas but also reveals by him self the Islands shapes.

10% map sized of the original data. In the bottom right corner the most concentrated area of Pokemon spots, corresponds with the Hong Kong Island districts and the Kowloon territory crossing the bay area.

My first design was a purple points for the spots over a grey map, to give it a high contrast, but, then turns green and blue to keep it closer to the actual game interface. Usually I wrote my own text, but as you may know my english is not the best so, the layouts and the final product changes a bit on that also.

Illustrator layouts for Pokemon project. Version 2.2

The bottom section has a graphic about some characteristics of each class of Pokemon, the dropdown menu allows readers to switch the class and display different graphics, I have to say that I don’t like the Pokemon at all, even when I was younger, but I love to create data visualizations and offer to the people an other way of stories… visual stories; so Yes, I enjoy this project much as the Pokemon lovers has enjoy it also.

All the small graphics for Pokemon skills. Red for attack, blue for defence.

If you go inside a region of the map, the graphics will show you how dense are the spots in that area, how many spots are there and how big is in square km, ho! and also will allow you to zoom in just hovering the mouse in the map.

Area in detail, you can access by clicking areas in the main map, clicking the half circles of the top graphic, or choosing an specific region in the drop down menu.

Some time ago while living there in Costa Rica, near my house were these tireless birds pecking lampposts, I always asked myself how could be that these birds will support all that stress on their heads without any problems.
Drill on wood with the peak would be like ourselves we were to take a door and hitting her with the nose to open a hole in it, not to mention the pain it can cause, the head injury is a real factor, but for some reason these bird is not. So I put myself behind the track that make me understand that about the woodpeckers and the reason of because they can do that, and actually there are several studies explained it, there is even information from other peculiarities of this bird that I found wonderful, so, I decided start this infographic with this information.

First draft of the woodpecker infographic

My initial idea was to talk about those particular things in the bird head, starting with the hyoid bone which happens to be one of those secrets of the Woodpeckers, and provide information of the population and its evolution time, but as sought was more particular details that could become new parts.

Process of the main illustration.

I usually work with data and abstractions, but in this case the information is also deserved a more visual and descriptive than quantitative contribution. I start the main illustration at 400% of the size that eventually would use to gain a little more detail in the finish, it was a good idea I thought the beginning… but ended up making the process very slow production, added to this, while in Costa Rica worked full time for La Nación news, also had my students and projects with the university there, and some other professional responsibilities drowned me the time to complete this work.

Up in the picture the original assets from photoshop, down in the picture the final presentation in illustrator.

All that changed suddenly when I left three days journey to a new life in Hong Kong, as it would have very long flights to get here, I found a space to work on this and to conclude what had begun months ago.

I love to do this kind of stuff because there are not tied to the daily work, I do it for the passion about infographics, because data and visual stories fascinate me and because I like to share that wonder that I feel to find complex information and hidden and to bring it to others in a effective visual way of consumption, and also feel that awe for the information that was there before.

Final infographic about the Acorn Woodpecker.

This probably is not the best way to deploy this chart because the difficult to read it, but if you want to see in detail, maybe just click this link to my drive and read it in detail.

I hope the information here is as interesting to you as it was for me, and enjoy the piece as I enjoyed building it for you.

Back in 2013, I start as a lecturer of information design at the Science and Arts University from Costa Rica. Many students come to my class, more than a hundred of them went their way after receiving an initiation into the world of infographics and data visualization.

I enjoyed a lot the experience to share knowledge, but the time to move on has come. I will be focus in the finish of other personal projects as a collection of infographics from places and native things in my town, and also the finishing and publishing of my book about infographics.

As a closure of this period, I want to make a tour for the results of work of my students, starting in 2013, the results of the fist class:

In 2013, I try to make some conclusions about my class to improve it, with all the data collected I made this pieces:

The 2013 was ended, and the new year comes with new ideas, I made always different topics to investigate and develop projects at the University, and thats why in the early 2014 my students was started to collect data on field, to visualice it, beyond just make a research. The first class of 2014 worked with data tracking and field research.

This is the full story abuot: http://visual744.blogspot.com/2014/04/visualizacion-indoor.html

Also in 2014, but in the next cycle of my class, the topics change again, this time the main focus was isometric structures of historic buildings from Costa Rica, and a little complement in data-viz about the posters artist.

The full story about this period: http://visual744.blogspot.com/2014/08/ciclo-ii-2014-en-la-universidad-de-las.html

And some works also:

The church of Coronado, infographic Alexander Soto.

Detail: Analysis of the work of Cheret. Infographic: Daniela Rojas.

Displaying the work of Victor Moscoso. Nohelia Mora infographic.

For the 2015, the first class start with a dataviz project about the things in the moon, tons of data about spacecrafts, natural features and some other stuff related.

Every cycle of my class contains at less 3 projects, but many time the students have nice results on one o two of these, not because a skill thing I suppose, it is more a issue related in time to dedicate between my class and the other things that they are doing.

The moon in the 20th century, infographic by Andrey Castro, information design student. University of Science and Arts, in April 2015.

Detail of the Andrey Castro daily work, for his project “The Moon in the 20th century” University of Science and Arts, in April 2015.

The next cycle of my class was dedicated to visualice classic books and the process of some systems inside the human body, in 2015 the students show some nice graphics also, take a look in to the full story here: http://visual744.blogspot.com/2015/08/ds4-agosto.html

The response of an strange to a smile of me on a week. Social project for extra points by Kristel Mora.

The Megasoma Elephas. infographic by Pablo Soto.

where the lightning comes from? infographic by Kevin Salazar

Finally, the last week my students present the results of the first cycle of the 2016, the first for the year and last for me. I hope these years in the classrooms of the University have been of benefit to all who crossed their training with my participation period of this wonderful experience of my life. I hope that at some point after finishing my projects I can share again with future professionals in this or another university and follow them sharing the passion for infographics.